Sunday, March 15, 2015

Hamilton wins F1 Melbourne season opener

Lewis Hamilton wins F1 Melbourne Season Opener

As expected Mercedes dominated in the 2015 season opener at Melbourne and defending champion Lewis Hamilton lead his teammate Nico Rosberg into a 1-2 finish in the Melbourne F1 Grand Prix.

Sebastian Vettel marked his Ferrari stint with a podium finish whereas teammate Kimi Raikkonen was done with due to a tyre not fit properly.

The 2015 F1 Grand Prix season opener had a lot of drama even before the engines were revved. Giedo van der Garde had filed a case against Sauber claiming that he had a contract with Sauber for racing in the 2015 season. Sauber denied that. However, in the court Sauber couldn't defend it. However, not to be undone, Sauber did not sign on the papers for the dutchman Garde to get the FIA Super license to be eligible to drive in the race. Finally they decided to continue discussing for an out of court settlement and Sauber raced with its nominated 2015 drivers, and out of those two drivers Felipe Nasr finished in 5th position. It finished the points drought of Sauber as it had gone blank in 2014.

Felipe Massa of Williams finished in 4th position. He had voiced his opinion about Ferrari being strong this year and he was proved right. His teammate Valtteri Bottas couldn't race due to a back injury during qualifying.

Daniel Ricciardo of Red Bull was 6th followed by Nico Hulkenberg of Force India in 7th. It was a very credible finish for Hulkenberg as Force India had hardly three days of testing due to funds constraints. Sahara group, one of the co-owners of Force India is in dire financial conditions. The owner of the Sahara group Subrata Roy is in jail since last year and has been unable to furnish the record bail amount of 10,000 crores of rupees which is slightly more than one and half billion dollars. Vijay Mallya, the other co-owner and face of Force India, himself is being hounded by the various banks as his Kingfisher airlines have sunk reportedly due to financial mis-management and the banks have lost around billion dollars lent to Kingfisher Airlines.

Marcus Ericsson of Sauber came in 8th to score 4 points. Carl Sainz of Toro Rosso was 9th with 2 points followed by Sergio Perez of Force India in the 10th and last points paying position.

Jenson Button of McLaren was finished 11th and out of points paying position. It was atleast good for the McLaren using the Honda engine that Button could atleast drive an entire race distance and the resulting feedback can help improve the team. The other McLaren was driven by Kevin Magnussen who failed to put in a lap. McLaren's high profile signing of Fernando Alonso had made an even bigger controversy when Alonso hit the wall during testing and appeared to have passed out. There were rumours that Alonso got an electrical shock and hit the wall at a medium speed. Later Alonso was advised to sit out the Australian Grand Prix. Unfortunately, his replacement the reserve driver Kevin Magnussen's car along with Daniil Kvyat's car couldn't start and only 15 cars started the race.

Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado were involved in accidents and couldn't last long. Verstappen, the 17 year old driver of Toro Rosso also retired.